In early 2007, under the leadership of current Chairman Dipak Basu, Actionaid and Reuters Foundation carried out an ethnographic study in the Ganges Delta region south of Kolkata, India’s third-largest city, which showed that economies of desperately poor and marginalized people can be dramatically impacted by an increase of local employment. Subsequently, a group of dedicated social entrepreneurs sets up Anudip Foundation For Social Welfare to address the critical livelihood needs of people of rural and urban India through information technology.
In its initial years, Anudip began establishing job training centers nearby three locations in the Sundarbans region of eastern India. These first centers were learning prototypes launched in partnership with community NGOs, with Anudip providing faculty, training equipment, student mobilization, training, and placement services. Subsequent feedback from our alumni and recommendations of our donors, advisors, and partner-NGOs led to the concept of market-aligned skills, career and livelihood development centres, and an integrated model that has had a far-reaching impact on the skilling industry.
Our origin is thus rooted in a strong culture of research, which has endured over the years – for example, the use of ADDIE model and Gagnes Nine Events Framework in course development, experiential/active/latent learning, neural plasticity, mnemonics from Cognitive Science in crafting training mechanisms, or Kirkpatrick’s model for evaluating training programs. We consider Anudip to be a living lab in education and employability research, whose programs can inform similar initiatives across the world. The adoption of technology across the board, blended learning pedagogy, standardized and stringent monitoring and quality control makes our solution scalable by design.
While the laurels and the continuous support of our donors have enabled us to reach our current size and scale, the biggest reward for us is to see the needle move in the quality of lives of the thousands in India. Over 150,000 families and 400,000 individuals have benefited from Anudip’s technology-driven livelihood programs across 18 Indian States and 57 districts. Our technology-driven livelihood programs are capable of systemic change as they focus on holistic development of youth and women from high-need marginalized communities, religious minorities, tribal, political refugees, people with disabilities and victims of trafficking. We are privileged to have loyal and long-standing corporate partners such as Accenture, CISCO, Wells Fargo, Unilever, Citibank, JP Morgan, ICRA, HSBC, Capgemini, Bank of America, Tata Group and others who support us in our endeavors. Our stellar placement record with 75% consistent success over the years stems from its training programs being tailored to actual needs of employer-partners like Tata Consultancy, Walmart, iMerit, Tech Mahindra, Neilson, Accenture, Wipro, Atos Syntel, Amazon, IBM, Wels Fargo and many others from across sectors. The journey from the past was not easy— joining a mainstream competitive workforce for our students needs courage and grit to overcome mental barriers, battling naysayers, enormous perseverance, diligence and a significant amount of un-learning and re-learning.
